Over the decades, marketing has evolved through a lot of stages and eras. Some of these include the production era, sales orientation era, the societal orientation era, and now the digital marketing era in which AI is part.
AI marketing has become an indispensable part of digital marketing for any business, or firm that prioritizes customer satisfaction. Recent research reveals that 51% of eCommerce companies use artificial intelligence to improve customer experience and provide seamless operation.
AI marketing is not restricted to the business to consumers niche alone as 64% of B2B marketers have considered artificial intelligence to have a significant impact on their marketing strategy.
Table of Contents
What is AI Marketing?
AI marketing is any marketing channel, platform, or strategy that uses artificial intelligence technology (mostly machine learning) to make automated marketing decisions that are based on previously collected and analyzed data, and predictive marketing trends to achieve a predetermined marketing objective.
Artificial intelligence marketing can also be said to be creating marketing or advertising campaigns that rely majorly on artificial intelligence to achieve their marketing objectives.
Artificial intelligence marketing is essentially great as it employs more personalized data which gives its target some sort of personalized experience and in turn leads to more effective marketing and better conversion rates.
What are the Components of AI Marketing?
For artificial intelligence marketing to function properly and achieve its marketing objectives, there are certain components that must be engaged and these are;
Large Data and Analytics
Data is lIfe! Read that again. To a marketer who employs artificial intelligence marketing, data constitutes any piece of information with useful and relevant content that can help to analyze, predict, or influence customers’ decision-making behavior.
When it comes to AI marketing, data is not just enough but large voluminous data. The success of artificial intelligence marketing depends on the data fed to the AI algorithm and must possess 3 significant features for the success of the campaign.
The data must have;
Volume: large enough in terms of quantity.
Relevance: you cannot use data obtained from say graphics designers to predict the behavior of software developers.
Up-to-date: For a successful AI marketing campaign, your data must not only be big and relevant but as well be updated. Using a set of data collected about technology in 1992 to make predictions about the year 2030 would not only fail but mislead users of such data.
Machine Learning
Machine learning is computer-written algorithms that are trained to take and analyze big data, identify common or recurring trends, and use this to predict future occurrences or behaviors of target customers in marketing.
AI Platforms Solution
These powerful platforms are needed to provide AI marketers with a centralized program to manage the huge and voluminous data being analyzed and provide useful insights as regards what the future holds. These platforms are essential to help AI marketers with data-driven decision-making that interns help in achieving their marketing objectives.
How to Use Marketing
AI Marketing can be used across varieties of niches, platforms, and businesses in different ways. Some of the ways to use AI marketing in different niches include
- Personalization in E-Mail Marketing
- Up-selling or suggesting related products in e-Commerce
- Employing chatbots in customer relationship management
- Targeting for paid ads such as Facebook and Google ads
- Automation for webinars
- And many more.
What are the Advantages of Using AI in Marketing?
Technology is constantly evolving and this has seen artificial intelligence being used in marketing for more optimal and effective marketing. According to a study, 72% of marketers see AI as an advantage in marketing and business as a whole.
Now let’s see some of the ways in which marketers can leverage Artificial Intelligence to boost their marketing performance and business in general
High Level of Accuracy in Predicting Customers’ Behavioral Patterns
AI analyses large data to give useful and ‘accurate’ insights into the behavioral pattern of customers. This helps the companies or marketers to make more informed decisions about what makes or mar their marketing objectives, how customers make their decisions, how customers use their products or service, and many more.
Highly Personalized Recommendations and Content
Another great advantage of using AI in marketing is personalized content. This ensures the content delivered to a certain segment of your audience is highly curated to fit their personnel. Using personalized recommendations lessens the frictions customers encounter in making decisions and makes the advert seems less like an advert to them. Remember, No one like to be Sold!
Improved ROI on Marketing Expenses
Using AI in marketing has proven to convert much better due to a lot of factors. This has helped marketers to get more returns on investment for their marketing expenditure and optimize their marketing budget better.
Better Advertising Report Performance Report and Evaluation
Using AI in marketing helps you get better feedback, and makes it easier to analyze your advertising campaign report. AI provides much more detailed reporting and every single piece of information needed about your target audience. AI in marketing also makes it easier for marketers to optimize their adverts and make them better for optimum conversion.
Enhanced Customer Profiling
AI in marketing helps profile your customers using a variety of factors or conditions which in turn leads to better-targeted marketing techniques and improves conversion. For example, marketers can profile their customers using demographics such as age, gender, and race, and create a separate marketing campaign to suit each of these groups of customers but with the same end goal.
Improved Marketing Team Efficiency and Performance
A very good AI can collect, process, and analyze consumers’ data much faster than a group of humans. This allows companies to employ AI to efficiently carry out and optimize these huge tasks while the members of the marketing team focus on other tasks like creating marketing campaigns and the like. AI can also be employed to automate repetitive tasks which in turn frees up time for members of the marketing team to focus on more important tasks and decision-making.
What are the challenges of AI Marketing?
The use of AI in marketing has definitely improved the way marketers run their campaigns and has faced some really huge challenges. This is because artificial intelligence in marketing is still in its early stages, and just like any new technology or development, there will always be challenges in implementing them. Below are some of the challenges
Compliance with Data and Privacy Rules
Marketers and organizations must ensure data and privacy regulations such as CCPA and GDPR are complied with. This will limit the extent to which the data obtained can be used in their marketing campaigns and failure to comply with these regulations may result in huge penalties by appropriate authorities. The most recent and biggest example of this is Facebook Vs Apple in their tracking and data transparency issues which allow apple devices user to grant or deny apps permission to track their activities.
AI Algorithm Training and Data Quality
AI uses machine learning, which takes a lot of time to train the algorithm. This could take several years depending on the volume of the data and the complexity of the algorithm and its structure. This for sure heightens the entry barriers for the mass adoption of AI in marketing as it takes a whole lot of time to train these algorithms and deploy them. Also, the algorithm must be fed with top-notch data to ensure the desired output is gotten. One of the pioneers of AI in marketing, Facebook (Now Meta) was reported to have been researching Artificial intelligence for 10 years.
Organizational Adoption
A lot of organization stakeholders are not aware of the value AI has to offer their business, and how it can impact their business growth. This makes it difficult for the marketing team to convince the stakeholders to approve and fund the use and deployment of AI in their marketing activities.
How to Choose an AI Platform
Choosing the right platform for your AI is not only one of the first steps to take to employ AI in marketing but one of the most critical decisions that can make or mar your AI marketing campaign. Choosing the right platform is high of the essence and needs to be an informed decision that must be well throughout before taking any steps.
To ensure you choose the right platform for your AI, certain factors must be considered and these include:
- The goal of the AI: This is the problem you are planning to solve with your artificial intelligence solution.
- The scale of the AI: This is the scale at which your AI solution will be deployed. You need to decide if this solution will only be deployed for use in your company alone, or if other companies or marketers will make use of it. This helps you define the scope of the AI algorithm properly.
- Speed of operation: This is the speed at which the AI will operate, i.e process data, and provide necessary analysis and output.
- Flexibility: This refers to how flexible or complexes your AI solution would be.
All of the factors above should be thoroughly considered in choosing the best platform for your AI.
Examples of AI in Marketing
There are several examples of Ai in marketing and these include
Chatbots
The evolution of digital marketing has helped companies to engage their customers and audiences better. However, it can be really overwhelming to respond to customers’ messages, requests, and complaints for large corporations with a huge customer base. This is a huge problem for the company has to hire huge support staff in order to keep up with this pace, but artificial intelligence through chatbots has provided a better, cheaper, and optimal option to get this issue solved. Chatbots are trained to respond to customer requests through large use of data and put them through processes that do not require human intervention. This has been deployed in various units such as customer relationship management, sales, and many more.
AI Content Creation
Artificial intelligence has been deployed in the content creation industry. We now have AI software that writes website content that not only satisfy search engine but also produce content that is as well humanly readable. These are far different from content spinners, and rewriters but real AI that writes unique and quality articles. Examples of this software are jasper, and Frase.
Also, there are AI software to help optimize content for search engine optimization using natural language processing (NLP). A perfect example of this is SEO Dweeb which helps content writers to optimize content by analyzing search engine results and giving useful information about what to do to get content ranked.
Email Marketing Personalization and Automation
A lot of businesses now utilize e-mail marketing to constantly stay in touch, educate, and as well market their audiences. AI has improved this marketing channel through personalization such as using the recipient’s name, location, or other personal info in their emails.
AI has also improved these marketing channels through email automation, which automatically profiles a customer when they signup to receive emails, profiles them, assigns them to the right customer segment, and kick-starts the marketers’ desired email sequence for the receiver profiles. This has helped marketers in eliminating a lot of manual tasks and perform email marketing better.
Wrapping it Up
Artificial Intelligence is still in its learning phase and it’s constantly evolving. However, it is a very essential marketing means to learn and implement by marketers or companies who are ready to adapt to the ever-changing technologies of today.
Technology is fast improving and affecting every sphere of our lives including our businesses. So if you intend to stay relevant and in business in this dynamic world, be ready to learn, and implement AI in marketing or get eaten by the ‘sharks’ that do.
General FAQ About AI Marketing
Is AI Marketing Profitable?
Yes! AI marketing is very profitable and has a very high ROI. This is because AI marketing has enhanced customer targeting to increase conversions, and minimum marketing expenditure because most of the process can be automated.
What are the problems in AI marketing?
The major problems in AI marketing are;
- Data privacy and legislation compliance
- Quality data for machine learning
- Long time to train the AI program
- Insufficient IT infrastructure
- The complexity of developing and deploying the AI
- And many more.
Is AI marketing Legal?
Absolutely! AI marketing is legal as long as you comply with data and privacy policy such as CCPA, and GDPR.
What are the major risks in using AI Marketing?
The major risks involved in using AI marketing are:
- Privacy violation
- Algorithmic errors cause by low-quality data
- Automation may lead to job loss
- Socioeconomic inequalities
- And lots more…
